Internet access in El Kurru village has been extremely slow this year. I’ve come down to Khartoum to resolve some banking problems—the grant from Qatar has finally arrived! It’s just in time for payday—I was starting to have mental images of an angry mob chasing me for money that I didn’t have (although my friends in the village would be patient with us).

This gives me a chance to catch up on posting some blog entries.

Our season began with our arrival in a delightfully warm and calm Khartoum—at 3:30 am on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul. We stayed at the Acropole Hotel in Khartoum, as usual, as we waited for some of the jet lag to wear off, and tried to buy the supplies that will not be available up north.

This year, our architect-engineer Luis Martín Díaz spent several days in the suq (Arabic for market) finding supplies of structural steel and other building materials that we can use in the beautiful cover to the entranceway of our pyramid once we’ve finished excavation. Difficult to find, and it would have been entirely impossible for us to negotiate the markets without the help of George Pagoulatos, one of the owners of the Acropole Hotel. But everything got purchased, and we enjoyed some Sudanese street scenes on the way.